Just
a comment regarding the article "Reporting
for Duty" in the Spring 2000 issue. I was fascinated to
learn how many Oberlin alums are in journalism. Also,
as I do not watch television, I have to say that when I heard
on National Public Radio the ad for Robert Krulwich's program
"Brave New World," I was intrigued and enjoyed all the parts
of the series very much. If only more programming were like
that.

Sylvia
Sanders '56

Grosse
Pointe, Michigan

Living
for the Moment

My
husband and I recently had the pleasure of hearing an Oberlin
Collegium Musicum concert in Washington, D.C. As expected,
the music was exquisite and was enhanced by the medieval atmosphere
of St. Mark's Episcopal Church on Capitol Hill. Afterwards
we enjoyed chatting with several articulate Oberlin students.
As we drove home, we realized we had been struck by the same
thing. We had asked the students about what they were doing
at school and what they hoped to do in the future. They were
greatly relieved to hear that, in our 50-ish opinions, they
need not decide on a firm and final career by their junior
year, nor even, perhaps, for years to come. Our message to
them, which we wish we had stated more clearly at the time,
is:

Throw
yourself into whatever you are doing. Enjoy it and get what
you can from it. It may not be your "real career," but while
you're at it, do some learning and have some fun!

Mary
Louise Cohen '71

Arlington,
Virginia

He
Made History Come Alive

Geoff
Blodgett has been such a valued presence for so long that
news of his retirement caught me by surprise. Not yet, I
thought. As a student in his class in the early 1960s, I
recall listening spellbound as he wrapped his webs of wonderful
words around historical events. Keep talking, I thought.

His
lectures on modern American history cast such a spell that
I couldn't help becoming an historian myself. To be fair,
his colleagues Barry McGill and Robert Neil had something
to do with my decision. Playing bad cop to his good cop,
they beat it out of you, while he coaxed. In the end, I
think it was the combination that did the trick.

I
was once told that he said, "Dawley went to Harvard and
turned left." That was true enough, especially in view of
the radicalization of so many of my peers in the late 1960s
in response to Black Power and the unrelenting punishment
of Vietnam. But my real turning point happened before leaving
Oberlin, when I went off to 1963.
I never talked with Geoff or his colleagues about my decision
to join the civil rights movement. I doubt some of them
would have approved. But in unexpected ways, their hard-headed
engagement with the past certainly influenced my commitment
to make history and learn about it at the same time. Geoff
was always curious about what we were up to in the field
of battle, even as he did his best to teach us how to take
off the ideological blinders before looking at history.
He always embodied the best in higher learning.

Here
is one vote in favor of the upbeat, colorful magazine
design and one vote against the new logo. The former is
fun and exciting; the latter is terrible and depressing.
A logo should not be created for the mere sake of innovation.
It should visually reinforce an idea. It should be rational
in relation to that idea. It must resonate with the people
who use the logo as the symbol of something they love.
Change the letter r in the Oberlin logo, and you alter
a powerful symbol of uncommonly visionary history and
beliefs. It
is not just the name of an intercollegiate football team
or a banner to be waved by party animals. It stands for
intense moral and educational commitment. The new, revised
logo does not have the power to carry the historic Oberlin
vision in response to bigotry, laziness, ignorance, and
failure of courage. Beyond personal taste, the logo design
is effete, frivolous, disjointed, gimmicky, artsy, and
capricious. It treats Oberlin as if it were just another
commercial product. Symbols can be modernized, but not
whimsically, without careful thought about the work they
do.

Don
Patterson '60

The
Plains, Virginia

Another Glimpse of Andrew BongiornoBless
the Alumni Magazine for publishing Andy Ward's beautiful
tribute to Andrew Bongiorno (Spring, 2000). It told
me why Andrew had spoken to me so tenderly about Andy
for so long. Over a 21-year period, which began when Andrew's
dear friend, Ellen Johnson, visited Australia in 1977,
Andrew and I corresponded voluminously. We also met in
Oberlin while Laurine was still alive and after her death.
I visited the gravestone described in Andy's tribute;
Andrew took me to see it. Inevitably, my own tribute to
Andrew (available through Oberlin's web site) differs
substantially from his godson's. Since Andrew brought me
to the Catholic Church, I believe that our Heavenly Father
is all-powerful and just. God 'needs' Andrew only in the
sense that, like all His saints, he can now intercede
from heaven for everyone on earth who loves him. This
is what saints in the Catholic Church, canonized or uncanonized,
do.

In Sincerity and Authenticity Lionel Trilling encapsulates
Andrew's amazing, supererogatory role in my own life and
in the lives of countless other Oberlinians:

Jane
Austen was . . ."saturated" with a "Platonic idea"--she
was committed to the idea of "intelligent love," according
to which the deepest and truest relationship that can
exist between human beings is pedagogic. This relationship
consists in the giving and receiving of knowledge about
right conduct, in the formation of one person's character
by another, the acceptance of another's guidance in one's
own growth.